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Introduction

The production and manufacturing of solid pharmaceutical products is in need of new technologies to ensure a safe and efficient medical therapy. Hot melt extrusion (HME) is a new and innovative technology in the field of pharmaceutics, which aids to overcome numerous limitations of traditional manufacturing techniques. The benefit of HME is three-fold: First, the bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs is significantly increased due to the conversion of the drug from the crystalline into its amorphous state [1]. Recent work showed that HME is even capable of converting a liquid nanosuspension into a solid formulation in a one-step process [2], thereby avoiding aggregation of nanocrystals. Second, drug release profiles can be specifically tailored (in most cases retarded release of water soluble drugs) via the application of a proper matrix carrier in combination with plasticisers [3]. Third, drug abuse can be prevented due to superior mechanical properties of the final product [4].

Introduction

Continuous processing is a promising approach for solid dosage manufacturing. High-shear wet granulation is performed in continuous mode using twin screw granulators (TSG), characterized by a modular screw profile including a sequence of different screw elements with various shapes, orientation and functions. For process engineers it is a challenge to come up with prediction models to establish the relationship between equipment and material attributes, process data and the end-product testing results. If a reliable model is available which is able to predict the quality of the product, it can be inverted to obtain the design space, corresponding to that set of operating conditions required for achieving the target product quality (Figure 1). Such a modelling framework combined with in-process measurements, can provide a good mechanistic insight into the important parameters of continuous